zFS – A Scalable Distributed File System Using Object Disks

by O. Rodeh et al., MSST 2003.

Abstract:
zFS is a research project aimed at building a decentral- ized file system that distributes all aspects of file and stor- age management over a set of cooperating machines inter- connected by a high-speed network. zFS is designed to be a file system that scales from a few networked computers to several thousand machines and to be built from commodity off-the-shelf components.

The two most prominent features of zFS are its coop- erative cache and distributed transactions. zFS integrates the memory of all participating machines into one coher- ent cache. Thus, instead of going to the disk for a block of data already in one of the machine memories, zFS re- trieves the data block from the remote machine. zFS also uses distributed transactions and leases, instead of group- communication and clustering software.
This article describes the zFS high-level architecture and how its goals are achieved.

Link to the full paper:
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/faculty/tkosar/cse710_spring13/papers/zfs.pdf